Updated--"BP valve probably causing leakage"

UPDATE: "Feds let BP keep Gulf oil cap closed despite seep." (AP).

Chris in Paris (AMERICAblog):

The concern with the latest BP attempt to stop the massive leak has been that the pressure of shutting well down could force the sea floor to rupture and create an even larger problem. Observers had been closely following the valve pressure which would indicate whether or not there was a leak elsewhere. It now sounds as though US officials were not seeing enough pressure in the valve which suggests a leak somewhere else. If the well starts leaking elsewhere that could become a substantial problem. Opening new leaks beyond the well will be difficult to shut down. After the painful start to this disaster by the US government, it is good to see them paying more attention and finally, giving orders. BBC:

BP had hoped the cap could stay in place until relief wells stop the leak for good.

But with pressure readings from within the well lower than expected, scientists had raised concerns that oil could leaking into the surrounding undersea bedrock.

And in a letter to BP chief managing director Bob Dudley, Admiral Allen said: "Given the current observations... including the detected seep a distance from the well and undetermined anomalies at the well head, monitoring of the seabed is of paramount importance...

"I direct you to provide me a written procedure for opening the choke valve as quickly as possible without damaging the well should hydrocarbon seepage near the well head be confirmed."

Don't forget! Gulf Oil Still "Spilling" (live video)

PBS NewsHour: live streaming video from USTREAM.

"Oily Troubles Trickle Down" (with video)

Bill Whitaker (CBSNews.com) with video (03:25):

When the oil spill stifles the way of life for fisherman in Louisiana, it causes a domino effect for everyone affiliated with one of the largest industries in the area.

Like an oily octopus spreading its tentacles through the Gulf of Mexico, menacing muck is choking off sea life and on shore a way of life. Bill Whitaker reports. MORE...

Howie P.S.: More Good News from The Wall Street Journal:
"Obama Decried, Then Used, Some Bush Drilling Policies."

"AU 60 Minutes BP Oil Spill Video, 13 June 2010, Removed by BP Demand Part 1 and Part 2" (video)

Cryptome1, video: Part 1 (09:59) and Part 2, (03:59).

Howie P.S.: Kindra Arnesan is back in action here.

"Hands Across The Sand at Alki protests offshore drilling" (with video)

Patrick Robinson (West Seattle Herald), with video (02:40):

Hands Across The Sand saw 167 people line up on Alki Beach and join hands in a peaceful protest of offshore drilling. The event, international in scope took place at Alki and in 41 other nations, 71 cities outside the United States, and 24 events in the Seattle Area. It was sponsored by Moveon.org and the national Hands Across The Sand organization formed in Florida in 2009. MORE...

Updated: Venice, LA Resident Kindra Arnesan on BP (video)

UPDATE: The video has been yanked from the site below but lives on here. Some handwringing and background here.


wepollock, video (15:44).

H/t to Rachel Maddow.

Bad News Friday Roundup

"Jobs Bill Fails In Senate: Democrats Say Thursday's Doomed Vote Was The Last Chance" (Arthur Delaney):

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Thursday that after Republicans once again defeated a bill to reauthorize several expired domestic aid programs, including extended unemployment benefits, Democrats are giving up on trying to break the GOP filibuster.

"We're going to move to the small business jobs bill," said Reid. "We can't pass it until we get some Republicans... It's up to them." MORE...

"Stabenow: Republicans in ‘Cynical Game’ to Crater Economy by Stopping Jobs Bill":

Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), whose state has the second-highest unemployment rate in the country, just held a conference call with reporters, in which she expressed her belief that Republicans have cynically joined together to stop the jobs bill, also known as the tax extenders package or H.R. 4213, to keep the unemployment situation bad, or possibly make it worse, for their own electoral gains in the fall. MORE...

Tim Dickinson (Rolling Stone):

Here's what BP has in store for the Arctic: First, the company will drill two miles beneath its tiny island, which it has christened "Liberty." Then, in an ingenious twist, it will drill sideways for another six to eight miles, until it reaches an offshore reservoir estimated to hold 105 million barrels of oil. This would be the longest "extended reach" well ever attempted, and the effort has required BP to push drilling technology beyond its proven limits. As the most powerful "land-based" oil rig ever built, Liberty requires special pipe to withstand the 105,000 foot-pounds of torque — the equivalent of 50 Mack truck engines — needed to turn the drill. "This is about as sexy as it gets," a top BP official boasted to reporters in 2008. BP, a repeat felon subject to record fines for its willful safety violations, calls the project "one of its biggest challenges to date" — an engineering task made even more dangerous by plans to operate year-round in what the company itself admits is "some of the harshest weather on Earth." MORE...

Howie P.S.: I will endeavor to locate some good news today to balance this out.

Hertzberg on Obama and the Gulf Oil "Spill"

Hendrik Hertzberg (The New Yorker):

The most effective, most efficient way to rein in that consumption and make clean energy price-competitive would be to slap a heavy tax on carbon. (Ideally, much of the revenue would be rebated to the public as a cut in the payroll tax, since it makes more sense to tax things we want to discourage, such as oil use, than things we want to encourage, such as work.) This is what some European countries have done, and it may well be what Obama would do if he had the kind of legislative power that European prime ministers have and that many Americans, of all political persuasions, assume that he has, too.

But he doesn’t. As he did with health care, Obama is trying for the maximum that, in his judgment, our rusty, clanking legislative sausage-maker is capable of delivering.
(snip)
The confused lines of authority that the Times noted are still too muddled. Though it’s clear that the President was personally engaged from the start, allowing the opposite impression to take hold was a failure of governance, not just of public relations. And, as he acknowledged in his speech, his Administration was laggard in cleaning up the corrupt mess it inherited at the Minerals Management Service. But, unlike his most vociferous Republican critics, he is trying to move the country away from its abject subservience to oil. A shakedown? What Obama is trying for, in his methodical, sometimes maddening way, is a shakeup. MORE...

"In Deep Water: A Way of Life in Peril" (video)

AlJazeeraEnglish, video (23:21):

In the two months since the Deepwater Horizon explosion, millions of litres of oil have gushed out of BP's well into the water each day, slowly encroaching on the coastline. Fault Lines' Avi Lewis travels to the drill zone, and learns about the erosion in the wetlands from industry canals and pipelines, the health problems blamed on contaminated air and water from petrochemical refineries.

Howie P.S.: Naomi Klein's "Gulf oil spill: A hole in the world" is in the Guardian (UK):

The Deepwater Horizon disaster is not just an industrial accident – it is a violent wound inflicted on the Earth itself. In this special report from the Gulf coast, a leading author and activist shows how it lays bare the hubris at the heart of capitalism.

"Time to Tap T.R. And renew the progressive tradition"

Jonathan Alter (Newsweek):

The president was right to forgo aggressive BP bashing until he had secured the liability fund. The key is to attack the idea of deregulation—and that pressing BP is a “shakedown,” as Rep. Joe Barton put it—without a broad-based assault on all business. Now is the time for Obama to renew some of the older progressive traditions that have helped make the country great—to agitate and regulate in what we must, once again, define boldly as the public interest. MORE...

Greg Sargent on The Real "Big F-in Deal" About Obama's Gulf Response

Greg Sargent:

What's still hard to grasp is the obsession with the theatrics of Obama's response, rather than the substance of it.

The irony is that it's actually the substance of Obama's response -- not the theatrics of it -- that has real political implications. The pubilc doesn't care whether Obama meets some arbitrary pundit-generated threshold for proper emoting. It's hard to imagine that ordinary Americans spend much time wondering whether the failure to stop the spill symbolizes some larger truth about Obama and his presidency.

People just want the spill stopped, the responsible actors held accountable, and steps taken to ensure it doesn't happen again. How and whether Obama succeeds at these things seems like the real political story here -- and, to my mind, the more dramatic and interesting one, too. MORE...

FYI: "BP's Gulf well holds enough oil to spew out for two years, claim experts"

Protesters stand behind BP's chief executive, Tony Hayward, as he arrives to testify in front of the US Congress. Photograph: Haraz Ghanbari/AP

Guardian (UK):

BP's out-of-control well will go on spewing oil into the Gulf of Mexico for the next two years or more if all attempts to contain or plug the gusher fail, oil industry experts said today.

The estimates, based on new figures supplied by BP's chief executive, Tony Hayward, during seven contentious hours of testimony to Congress on Thursday, suggest the potential environmental and economic devastation would far outstrip the damage done so far by the ruptured well, which has been spewing for 60 days.

Hayward told a Congressional committee on Thursday the reservoir still held 50m barrels, providing fresh urgency to efforts to contain the oil, or seal off the gusher completely with a relief well.

Using the government's present flow estimates of up to 60,000 barrels a day, BP's well could go on gushing for two to four years, unless it is stopped. MORE...

Howie P.S.: H/t to RSN. Oil is not the only thing still flowing: "Federal approval still flowing for flawed Gulf drilling plans."

The ED Show---Tony Tells Lies on Capitol Hill (video)

The ED Show, MSNBC-video (13:11).

Rachel Maddow: "What She Wishes Obama Had Said" (with video)

HuffPo with video from MSNBC, (10:33):

Rachel Maddow was among the cable news hosts and pundits who were unsatisfied with President Obama's Oval Office address about the oil spill Tuesday night.

But instead of just complaining, Maddow offered a version of what she wished the President had said — and she did it from a fake Oval Office set on her show Wednesday night. MORE...

Howie P.S.: "Obama's Gulf Coast restoration plan is short on details" by Juliet Eilperin's is in this morning's WaPo.

"President Obama's Oval Office Address on BP Oil Spill & Energy" (video)

whitehouse, video (17:00).

Howie P.S.: Most pundits agree---it was a "hope and a prayer," too little too late and not very specific as far as proposed solutions.

STILL Leaking (with live video)

PBS, with live video.

Howie P.S.: Just in case you haven't heard, Obama will address the nation tonight on "The Spill" in his first Oval Office broadcast @ 5PM Pacific.

Campaigning Against "Big Bucks from Big Oil" (video)

American United For Change, video (00:31).

Howie P.S.: They also are running this ad against Scott Brown and Richard Burr.

"MMS has approved 198 deepwater oil leases since Deepwater Horizon explosion"

Chris in Paris (AMERICAblog):

The most recent lease was handed out on June 10. Wouldn't it make sense to step back and figure out what is going on and what changes need to be made to protect the environment before jumping into more drilling? Common sense is probably overrated anyway. MORE...

Howie P.S.: "Dear future generations: Please accept our apologies. We were rolling drunk on petroleum." ~Kurt Vonnegut

"BP exec gives pep talk amid US tensions over spill"

AP:

As the federal government ramped up pressure on BP, Gulf states affected by the disaster also were putting the squeeze on the company, seeking to protect their interests amid talk of the possibility that BP may eventually file for bankruptcy.

The attorney general in Florida and the state treasurer in Louisiana want BP to put a total of $7.5 billion in escrow accounts to compensate the states and their residents for damages now and in the future.

"At the end of the day, my concern is Louisiana," state treasurer, John Kennedy, told The Associated Press on Saturday. "BP ultimately will do what BP thinks is best for BP."

Alabama doesn't plan to take such action, and Mississippi and Texas haven't said what they will do.

But even with Florida and Louisiana, BP might have a hard time complying, and if it did, it could hasten the company's spiral downward.

That's because as of March 31, BP had $6.8 billion in cash and cash equivalents available.

Experts say BP wouldn't necessarily need to use cash to fund the accounts the states are asking for. Instead, the company could borrow money to comply. That, however, presents a potential problem because the company's borrowing costs are likely to be a lot higher due to investor concerns.

BP said in a statement to the AP that it's considering the Florida request. It didn't address the comments by Kennedy.

"We have received a variety of funding requests from different states and have been responding to them in due course based on the particular issues raised in each," BP said, adding that it already has made grants totaling $245 million to four Gulf states and is committed to spending up to $360 million to fund construction of six barrier island berms in Louisiana.

And as to the concerns raised about a possible bankruptcy filing, BP said only that as of Saturday it was "not in discussions with" and had "not engaged any bankruptcy experts."

Along the Gulf coast, ominous new signs of the tragedy emerged on the beaches of Alabama. Waves of unsightly brown surf hit the shores on Saturday in Orange Beach, leaving piles of oil that dried in the hot sun and extended up to 12 feet from the water's edge for as far as the eye could see.

It was the worst hit yet to Alabama beaches.

"This is awful," said Shelley Booker of Shreveport, La., who was staying in a condominium with her teenage daughter and her friends near the deserted beach about 100 miles from the site of the spill.

Scientists have estimated that anywhere between about 40 million gallons to more than 100 million gallons of oil have spewed into the Gulf since a drilling rig exploded. The latest cap installed on the blown-out well is capturing about 650,000 gallons of oil a day, but large quantities are still spilling into the sea. MORE...

Howie P.S.: In the UK, the Mirror reports "PM David Cameron's oily call to US president Barack Obama." Yesterday's England-USA World Cup match didn't go too well for them, either. Meanwhile, "Tide of anger may turn an ecological tragedy into a political nightmare" is in the Guardian (UK).

Obama to POLITICO: "Some in Congress hypocritical on spill"

Roger Simon (Politico):

President Barack Obama said Friday that some members of Congress are being hypocritical when it comes to blaming the White House for its handling of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

In an interview with POLITICO, the president said: “I think it’s fair to say, if six months ago, before this spill had happened, I had gone up to Congress and I had said we need to crack down a lot harder on oil companies and we need to spend more money on technology to respond in case of a catastrophic spill, there are folks up there, who will not be named, who would have said this is classic, big-government overregulation and wasteful spending.” MORE...

Howie P.S.: Sorry man, you can't say "I told you so" for stuff you didn't say out loud at the time. Why didn't you?